Why You Should Go to Paris (And Beirut, And Belgium, And ...) Now More Than Ever

It's been a jarring ten days, from the Paris attacks to the assault in Mali, the Brussels lockdown and the State Department's alerts. But staying home and shutting down is the opposite of a cure. Empathy is born of exposure—a reaching out, not a turning in. It starts in those moments of discovery we only get by going somewhere that can surprise us.

How strange it was ten days ago Friday, to step from the subway stairs into my Brooklyn neighborhood after three hours of intense attention to the unfolding horrors in Paris—to see people walking the sidewalks on a gentle fall evening, pausing at menus, examining shoes in a window display, greeting friends in the doorway of a bar. It all seemed so calm—so utterly, and then glaringly, normal.

In spirit, it's a neighborhood not unlike those in the 10th and 11th arrondissements where some of the Paris attacks took place: eclectic, creative, dotted with sandwich shops and boutiques; graced by the occasional restaurant of ambition and quality, by European-style butchers and cheese shops, thoughtful wine stores. It's full of young people. It's full of new parents and their kids. On a given Friday night they gather, just as their spiritual twins in Paris do, just as they were when I stepped off the train, to mark the close of another week of work. It's only a small, charmed pause, all too fleeting.

We take these things for granted. Even here, in New York, where we know better—where we've seen what carnage looks like and how quickly it can arrive. Not because we're unaware. Not because we don't believe it can happen. But because it's in the accretion of these moments that we find our whole lives, and we must inhabit them.

The best kind of travel is made of such moments. Monuments are nice, of course; natural wonders can be breathtaking. But most of the time they don't change us the way a small, unheralded delight can. A bowl of soup in a corner bistro; softening cheese on the table of a sidewalk wine bar. Kids who pass a soccer ball over the flats of a plaza, or the austere charm of a chair in a sculpted park. That glass of stony Chablis speaks not just of the place in which it's made but of the place in which we drink it, and the time. And it's these small, singular, decidedly sensual delights that form our sense of a place. We carry them with us as memories. Over time, they become who we are.

You can't get those from a distance. You can't get them over barriers, from a bus or car. You can't even get them, most of the time, from a hotel. You have to get out. Go there. Walk the streets, sit at the tables. Breathe in the scents. Grip the doorhandles, hear the scuffs of your own shoes against the stairs. See; hold; eat. Do.

You have to get out. Go there. Walk the streets, sit at the tables. Breathe in the scents. Grip the doorhandles, hear the scuffs of your own shoes against the stairs. See; hold; eat. Do.

In the week since the Paris attacks there've been more threats and more attacks. Mali. New York. Brussels. The conflict in Syria has intensified; governments in Europe and the U.S. are knotted over refugee policies. On Tuesday, the State Department released a global travel advisory. Some of this is understandable. Much of it is opportunistic. More than a little will prove to be misguided. Fear is limbic; the tendency to turn inward, keep to ourselves, is instinctive, and nearly universal.

But it's the opposite of a cure. Empathy is born of exposure—a reaching out, not a turning in. It starts in precisely those moments of discovery. Will we cancel plans to visit Paris this winter, get away to Vermont instead of Vail—places we can drive rather than fly, close to home, even home itself? Will we order in, avoid our own neighborhood's streets, to say nothing of grand public spaces? Will we do our shopping online and dine only on what we know, with the people we know, in the places we can be sure we won't be surprised?

I hope not. I believe not. Now more than ever, it's time to reach out. Time to go, see, connect. Taste a new flavor. Touch a fabric we've never worn. Let unfamiliar sounds drape our tongues. If you've got a trip booked, take it. Add two days—you could use the break. Grab a train to another city. Make that city Paris, if you can. Or Istanbul. Make it Beirut. The risk, statistically, is far lower than the one you're already taking each day when you start up your car. And if you don't have a trip coming, book one now. Instead of going home for the holidays, go abroad. Fares are great. Hotels are better than ever; Airbnb's everywhere you could possibly want to go. Head to London for the New Year, take your kids to the Tate. It might change their lives. Take your kids to lunch at St John—that will definitely change their lives.

It's glib to say we won't fear. We will, a little bit. In Paris. In New York. In Berlin and London, Madrid and Amsterdam, Beirut and Tehran. We'll second guess ourselves, sense the prick of anxiety, even on gentle evenings in the most obscure and insignificant neighborhoods, even when we're doing no more than meeting a friend for a drink.

But if we do it—when we do it—we'll be making life. And that, after all, is why we're here.